Era of Magic (EoMa) 4.0 - new units and 24fps standing animations!

[IPS]

[…] For example I've heard many people still prefer the old Air God sprite over the new one. So... which of my older sprites do you like the most?

I’m pretty late, but in my case I’m nostalgic of the old Earth elementals (the entire line, including earth avatar and god).
Previous ones looked a bit more rock solid, with a slightly more plain design but one that fits. New earth elementals looks a bit "blurry" in a way, and I’m not a fan of the green circle, although I don’t hate it either.
I admit tho that the old earth elemental looked like it had a beak

I still miss slasher and master units from Englited Ones

Also they got slightly reworked into units that are actually in use (Hidden Face and Mystical Warrior) while not being accurately the same unit, most of their aspect is the same (most changes are in Master which was a POWERFUL aura unit at having both skirmisher and lv2 leadership in same unit, but people disliked the unit just because of the lv2 cap)

I would even like to see them back as factionless or as lore units as some kind of sand bandits or idk ... I could even make them a lv3 if that was even possible as well of few modifications to OLD inspiration units. The 5-5 (or 4-5 whatever?) from lv1 slasher was quite interesting in a swiftfoot and also having significant damage output just that it did not have skirmisher nor magical ressistances, and the only thing I disliked from Master is that their blade attack was forcely change to impact 5-6 which in certain cases would not be much of help (like as dealing with default units as woses, which are 40% impact resistant but 0% to blade).

Things in mind that just for later I could even consider at helping in the design of lots of factionless units (which are not part of the actual 7 playable factions) but still could have an use for narrative purposes. Also I'm talking about this as a mid/long term as actually most units will have standing animations and motion animations which is actually the era's main goal.

Still, in soon I'ma go test some random casual 60x55 tests againist AI as I usually did, to visaulize if there are still not notable unfair interactions (such as it allowed me to realize very unfair things as how lv2 saurian shaman was capable to be 1 HIT KILLED -even in full HP- by multiple lv3 units in just 1 high accuracy ranged strike on lv3 units, thing that ofc cannot be balanced lol)

[the_Nocturni]

Hello, first I have to say I've been enjoying the recent updates a lot!

However, one oddity I found was that the Bone Beast's collector weapon special does not seem to be working
At first I thought maybe it was because I was playing WC2 with it, but that didnt seem like the case since other 'RPG-blocked' specials such as swallow were working

I also tried a hotseat multiplayer by myself with EoMa, and did not notice collector proccing when killing a non-magical unit(goblin runts and archers iirc)
the current health increased by 1, but probably due to scavenger, and the max health did not increase at all

Could this be a bug? I didnt notice any oddities in the cfg file but my knowledge of Wesnoth modding is close to none so...

[inferno8]

Era of Magic 4.0.3 is out!

This is another small update focused on fixing bugs reported by players (Ravana, Konrad2 and the_Nocturni - thank you!).

Full changelog:

Code: Select all

## Version 4.0.3
 ### Descriptions
   * fixed incorrect solar regeneration ability description
 ### Abilities
   * fixed the collector ability not working
 ### Code
   * removed markup from unit descriptions
   * updated msgmerge_pofiles.sh
 ### Translations
   * updated EoMa_translation_template.pot
   * updated po files for supported languages

[IPS]

Few things I have to comment from things I've observed, that are required to be fixed.
- Kills from non primary targets when using all-around is not giving XP properly (it happened me with Mistress of light unit). Maybe recheck for triple-strike, beam, cleave and all area-of-damage attacks.
- Swallow is unintentionally healing from poison to wyverns after the kill and also giving the bonus HP. This was already spotted and fixed in BloodLust previosuly.

There are high chances that I find interesting things to mention as I've started at playing and spectating in multiplayer rooms. This is what I've spotted during the first two days.

[IPS]

Well, on here I have to inform about few things that can potentially become a mess, first will talk shortly about an issue (either ageless OR era of magic) I found and then the second topic, wich leaded me to make this post.

While playing a survival scenario (Ultimate survival) , more specifically at hardest diff and longest map in race mode, I found in turn 160 an enchanted buffed summoner portal (it was roughly 39-1 and 250 HP , because well, it's some kind of fun boss that quequo imagined for that map), problem is that everything would been alright if the gate wasn't getting XP from being attacked and attacking, which then leaved me to deal with a much stronger lv1 unit that was like 500 HP and 33-4 rhami LOL , which I killed just because I had a tons of arcane damage playing as one of the many ageless faction just before it could reach lv2 (yeah, that's HEAVY XP mod farming, how I managed to get 25-7 arcane mages)

Problem: either from AE or Era of Magic, that portal was adquiring XP even if it says it can only from kills. In soon in turn 200 I will be posting the replay in ageless topic to make it easier to detect.


The other thing... this is more specific and worries me more.

Before, in ageless, we used to add an special named un-upgreadable(x) where X is the defined mount of maximun strikes that unit could have. This was quite useful in ageless to nerf very specific units with huge endgame mods (Orocia shrine upgrades OR XP mod being the most common cases) such as Um with its Um strike attack (in AE , before this EoMa release to it, Um was having only Um barrage and melee to not deal with problems of people buffing strikes into this unit ... as well there are some other specific cases that will havoc really a lot in AE ecosystem in the aspects I'm mentioning. Will mention all units in here.

--- Omen and all upgrades: area attack having both +all-around and +no-counter-attack being the problem in this topic. Unit's base values are fine and balanced so far, but problem is when it's about adding more strikes or upgrades in non RPG games where the combination of +DMG +STRIKES becomes unfairly deadly. In AE before this release we added a copy of that attack with no upgrade restrictions (but without all-around) and the original attack nerfed to un-upgradable(3) meaning the original attack with all specials was limited to a maximun of 3 stirkes.
--- Um: pretty obvious and the very first to be mentioned (because of being a very popular unit in AE community). Before this release we just disabled UM strike when playing in AE as scalling 3-12 with magical with damage bonuses is very strong, but also being very powerful 15-1 +magical-anti armor that its damage won't decrease as Um losses HP and that bonus strikes makes this attack the most broken of highly modded games. This matter will be a real difficult one to adjust even now.
--- Master of Fire: Magical, one strike combined of all-around attack being the issue in this topic. To this unit we used to have un-upgradable(1) in AE. Just add more strikes and it will be AoD murderer.
--- Air god: The same case as master of fire, but also adding a new attack type to the unit... even worse.
--- Master of Air: not as grave as Air god, but maybe more grave than Master of Fire lol.
--- DMT & MTP: New rune master units. Tons of area of damage to pick, as well of a +no-counter-attack with AoD , this can easily the most dangerous of all mentioned units so far. In AE , if we had the un-upgredable feature we would cut the AoD to +un-upgradable(2) and limit the 21-1 burst with no +first-strike either +triple-strikes for upgrades greater than 1 strikes. Both attacks having a replacement with same base damages AND unit being unnafected as long not getting external upgrades.
--- Mistress of Light: AoD all-around ranged and powerful 1 strike burst and +magical accuracy, same as most mentioned cases.
--- Infernal Vortex: also another important case at featuring powerful 1 strikes attack of high accuracy AT TWO different ranges. This was never been fixed in ageless, and unit was just nerfed in mayor part because of this aspect and players loving to abuse with this unit.
--- Lv3 and Lv4 summoners: high 1 strike attack that also always hits, this was previously "nerfed" by adding un-upgradable(1) to this attack and also giving a new attack that can scale with strikes but with lowered accuracy (I think it used to magical? for x+n strikes circles)
--- Some other cases, in common featuring powerful 1 strike +magical and in many cases with AoD.

Point is that in very popular game modes and endgame xp mod many units will struggle at becoming too strong because of being soap of cheese potential and making the game outcomes be way too easy just because people will be exploting these few specific mentioned things in their advantage.


All units that are all fine, unless we add high stats alterations from mods (which are very common in multiplayer lobbies) and as people just start to make them exploit unbeliable over-rewarded OP potential by just using these specific units. And I know this is an hard topic, but it's just one of the smaller things we did care about in ageless for real long, so we will be requiring creative solutions to avoid plaguing units with specials or extra attacks that units would deal just because of just adapting to a very specific gameplay (which ended being very popular).

For Um, I have a bandaid fix lol , hope it at least helps a bit while we get something better to implement.

Um suggestions
- Mu missile attack modifciation from 6-1 +magical to 7-1 +enchanted
- Um Um strike attack accuracy decrease to +enchanted
Other solutions could be cutting Um-strike to have +Un-upgradable(1), while also removing this attack while using AE as we did, is bit too abusive lol, but even with that people still loved Mu and Ums XD.

[Ravana]

To clarify, unupgradable does not specify max amount of strikes. It is the only amount of strikes attack can ever have. You cant assign 3, while saying that it is allowed to be upgraded to 5. I saved some of the changes in https://github.com/ProditorMagnus/Agele ... aster/info and https://github.com/ProditorMagnus/Agele ... 4/issues/2 (not applied for this release)

[IPS]

Sadly, I will not be capable to send replay as map was updated by quequo, so replay will not work and I need also to update my ultimate survival add-on to be capable to spectate games played in multiplayer lobbies.

[Ravana]

From code review that is the expected behaviour. Just reaching the xp amount doesnt let you advance, it just carries over for after you have advanced.

[IPS]

From code review that is the expected behaviour. Just reaching the xp amount doesnt let you advance, it just carries over for after you have advanced.

Problem is that in both situations I attacked it and it leveled to lv1 when facing it in my real game, as well it can level up after it attacks something. But soul-catcher seems not be stopping unit from promoting from non kills experience.

[inferno8]

Problem: either from AE or Era of Magic, that portal was adquiring XP even if it says it can only from kills

I remember this issue being reported by Konrad2 in 2022 or 2021 and it has been fixed for EoMa, iirc (probably not for AE). This needs to be verified.

Point is that in very popular game modes and endgame xp mod many units will struggle at becoming too strong because of being soap of cheese potential and making the game outcomes be way too easy just because people will be exploting these few specific mentioned things in their advantage.

Well, the idea to modify some units' stats in EoMa because there is a mod X which makes these units too OP, doesn't seem a way to go in my opinion. My intention is to have EoMa factions balanced within EoMa ecosystem and that's the primary balancing goal. For that reason I scrapped the concept of EoMa+Default at some point during the era development. Still I am open for suggestions, but I am not going to treat them as high priority tasks.

[IPS]

Well, the idea to modify some units' stats in EoMa because there is a mod X which makes these units too OP, doesn't seem a way to go in my opinion. My intention is to have EoMa factions balanced within EoMa ecosystem and that's the primary balancing goal. For that reason I scrapped the concept of EoMa+Default at some point during the era development. Still I am open for suggestions, but I am not going to treat them as high priority tasks.

I know, still I'm viewing if in AE side there is a possibility to do an external intervention, otherwise will be thinking in lesser solutions which also could slightly change EoMa ecosystem (still by not that much). Also in case if second case happens, would be in units that are already strong (as in case of Um and its newest propossal for accuracy decrease on um strike attack).

Will be posting again as soon as there are suggestions or issues to post. Best is that we spotted few singularities that will be get corrected in 4.1

[Toranks]

Problem: either from AE or Era of Magic, that portal was adquiring XP even if it says it can only from kills

I remember this issue being reported by Konrad2 in 2022 or 2021 and it has been fixed for EoMa, iirc (probably not for AE). This needs to be verified.

This was fixed here: https://github.com/inferno8/wesnoth-Era ... ic/pull/38

[ForestDragon]

Well, the idea to modify some units' stats in EoMa because there is a mod X which makes these units too OP, doesn't seem a way to go in my opinion. My intention is to have EoMa factions balanced within EoMa ecosystem and that's the primary balancing goal. For that reason I scrapped the concept of EoMa+Default at some point during the era development. Still I am open for suggestions, but I am not going to treat them as high priority tasks.

Agreed, and same with GSE - some factions like Bull Tumen are extremely op in survivals, but are pretty well-balanced in steppe pvp.